


falling in love planet by planet

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cousy In Space, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Kiss, Future Fic, Intimacy, Outer Space, Romance, Space Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 10:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11965863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: It's a long way back to Earth.Written for the Cousy In Space Event at johnsonandcoulson.com





	falling in love planet by planet

**1.**

It’s only after Daisy breaks them out from prison that he realizes that the stars are actual places they can go to, and not just dots of light that served as comfort for his hopeless days in his cell. The cargo ship they are escaping in (the one they stole, he guess) is locked to one of those dots of light. Even out here, there are limits to where they can go. The fake credentials Daisy made for them have a very limited range - Earth is not within that range. Earth is not within range yet. He can see Daisy beginning to worry about that.

“Little by little,” he tells her, even though he should be saying _thank you for risking your life to get me out of that prison even though it would have been ten times easier to leave on your own_.

“Yeah, little by little,” Daisy says, sounding very little convinced, but willing to try, mostly focused on piloting the ship.

Coulson looks at the map on the console, tracing their progress among those dots of light in a bright green line.

“Let’s just take it one planet at a time,” he suggests.

It’s only after they break out of prison that he sees her smile again.

 

**2.**

She’s been gone twenty minutes and though he knows better than to worry about Daisy taking care of herself, he doesn’t like being alone here. He gives his drink a swirl; the barman said it was safe for human consumption but Coulson is not in a trusting mood.

“Do you mind? All this hard work has made me thirsty,” Daisy asks when she sits by his side.

He pushes the glass towards her and Daisy takes a sip, perfectly brave.

She puts four pieces of laminated documents on the bar, in front of Coulson.

“Here we are, our new identities, and two tickets to… I can’t pronounce the name of this planet. Is that a V?”

“What did you have to do to get them?”

He didn’t mean it like that, of course, but Daisy arches an eyebrow at him anyway, looking amused.

“Hacker’s skills are hacker’s skills, no matter what the planet.”

The planet with the unpronounceable name is only a stop among the many they have to get past to go back to Earth, while trying to escape the warrant issued against them. It feels a bit like the Wild West, no unified set of laws, all these planets are not really well connected and communication is scarce, but it’s not impossible that the forces of order or some gun for hire might find them among these stars.

He takes the new documentation in his hand, can barely believe the fake name Daisy has picked for him, it makes him smile with nostalgia and he relaxes. He tries the suspicious looking yellow drink. It’s not bad.

 

**3.**

One of the first planets they visit is a place where memory and identity are relative, forever changing and rearranging. Coulson points out, with a grim humor that makes Daisy touch the curve of his arm with warm fingers, that it’s like its inhabitants were constantly put under the Tahiti protocol, over and over.

 

**4.**

In a Kree-controlled planet they stick to alleyways, to shadows, heads down, Daisy tensing up every time her eye catches something blue. Coulson wraps his fingers in the crook of her elbow then, leading them out of the spot until her muscles relax under his touch, and it’s time for her to lead again.

 

**5.**

“I’m sorry,” she says, while blood drips from the hole in the palm of her hand. Coulson takes the gun from her, he takes off his jacket and sets off to improvise a way to bandage the wound. How could this possibly be her fault, he wonders, uncharacteristically tired of this thing she does, this thing she has been taught to believe vehemently, that everything is her fault.

“It’s in my blood,” she says, while she’s already working the door panel to keep their pursuers out, and to give her and Coulson a escape from here. The whole place went on lockdown as soon as the scanner revealed something in Daisy’s genes, something that made security grab their arms all in synch. Her blood a crime here.

“It’s not your fault, or you blood’s, that Earth is not the only planet where we’re assholes to Inhumans,” Coulson tells her, knowing his wording would give her pause and win him at least a half smile.

 

**6.**

In the next planet bureaucracy is not as deadly, but it’s still annoying. They get stuck for hours in something that looks like the planet’s customs. They fear all the paperwork might just end with them going back to prison. They are put in a cell together. They pass the time talking; Coulson is surprised to know this is Daisy’s first time in a cell, and Daisy is a bit offended by that, what kind of wild, dangerous girl did he think he was recruiting for SHIELD. Coulson just smiles, non-committal.

“I’m glad they let us be in the same cell, though,” Daisy comments, looking around, not looking at Coulson.

“Me too,” he replies, scrutinizing the cell itself, half paying attention to the conversation, the other half running all sorts of scenarios in his head, in case they need an exit strategy.

“I wouldn’t make it this far without you,” Daisy says, and Coulson turns around, something in her tone tells him this is something she has been wanted to say for a while.

Coulson gives her a tiny smile.

“Daisy… I wouldn’t have made it _out of the prison_ ,” he tells her. 

He wishes he had said that sooner.

 

**7.**

They find a planet made of softness. It has infinite waterfalls, feeding into each other. The aliens here (though Daisy guesses she and Coulson are _the aliens here_ in this case) have huge eyes, kind eyes. They are some form of telepaths and that fact makes her muscles clench with nerves whenever they are around her and Coulson. They seem to be unintrusive telepaths, dedicated to giving them a rest. They only eat liquids, but these are quite wonderful, and she and Coulson have the chance to catch their breaths. This world, unlike others, is friendly to Inhumans, and in fact Daisy gets to hear some stories about the origins of her people in other planets, of the hundred, even thousands of years of their struggle.

At night she can’t sleep from all that new information in her head. They have fed her and Coulson, tended to their most recent wounds, and wrapped them in silk-like fabrics, and now they are lying side by side in their beds. It’s not entirely dark, the planet being so luminescent, a pleasant glow filtering through the paper-like walls. She knows Coulson is not asleep either.

“I’m not saying I’m glad we got sent to space prison,” Daisy admits in the not-darkness. “But I’m glad I got to hear all that.”

“I’m glad too,” Coulson says.

Under the blanket he squeezes her shoulder briefly.

A part of here wishes they could stay in this soft planet forever, or at least a bit longer.

 

**8.**

Their faces keep flickering on tv screens - or equivalents - and in the corner of their eyes, they are normally too fast, already gone by the time someone makes the connection. Daisy is good at disappearing, Coulson is a quick study. They get attuned to how bounty hunters look - in any species. They play the game of who’s-going-to-take-a-bribe often, and they win often, too. Back alley doctors and information brokers become their best friends. Coulson no longer feels scrupulous about trying alien alcohol. Daisy hacks the software in his prosthetic hand to make it easier for them to pilot alien ships. She doesn’t use her powers much, trying to avoid attention. Earth gets closer and closer in their maps, but not fast enough.

 

**9.**

Daisy closes the door to the bathroom, starting a long sought-for hot shower in a planet where everything feels like dirt stuck to your skin. In the last couple of months the only times she’s been alone have been in the bathroom - she doesn’t mind, Coulson is very good at giving her space without leaving her on her own. And if she’s learned one thing in all this time is that the universe is big and scary and she gets nervous whenever Coulson is not in her line of sight. This part - finding a place to crash together, cleaning up, patching up, getting undressed in front of each other, sharing a bathroom - is still exactly unnerving, even though there’s little modesty left. Unnerved is not exactly it, something about this (beyond Daisy’s usual failure at intimacy) is making her restless.

“Are you okay?” Coulson asks, as they stand in front of the bathroom’s door, Daisy going out, him going in.

She realizes she has lingered more than usual.

“Sorry, was I too long?”

He shakes his head, kind as always. The t-shirt he’s wearing - beggars can’t be choosers - is missing one arm, torn almost up to the collar, his shoulder exposed, and the spots on his skin are just that, spots, imperfections of the skin painted by age, they’re not freckles, but they’re just as beautiful.

 

**10.**

They find a planet where it rains all the time and Daisy makes a joke about them being trapped in _Blade Runner_. He’s about to tell her that he saw it when it came out, and it blew his mind, as a very impressionable 20-year-old recruit, but he stops himself, a strange, unfamiliar pride choking the words. Which is ridiculous, he realizes, more than ridiculous, Daisy knows exactly how old he is. He looks down as they walk under the rain, stares at Daisy’s hand, still bandaged, rain seeping through the cloth.

“Which one of us is Deckard?” he asks.

“Well, me, obviously.”

“I thought I looked a bit Harrison Ford-ish,” Coulson teases, touching his chin, aware of his tone.

Daisy chuckles. “ _Of course_. But I’m wearing the cool jacket right now.”

 

**11.**

They stay silent as they catch the first glimpse of Earth, still far, but in front of them, looking alien and unfamiliar from this perspective. Coulson catches Daisy catching her breath and he shifts closer to her, until their shoulders are pressed against each other. Daisy catches him clenching his jaw as Earth becomes bigger, a reality, in front of them. She slips her hand inside his, fingers squeezing, retracing a now-sweet memory.

 

**12.**

Once on Earth they take Lola and ride to a field near the base, a clear night.

They lie on their back, on Lola’s hood.

“Do you miss it?” she asks, looking up at the stars, and back at months of running away, running towards something, running together.

“It’s too soon,” Coulson replies. “I’m just happy to be here for now. But I will probably miss it, sometimes.”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

Coulson thinks about how Daisy is so extraordinary it makes sense her life can’t be confined to a single planet.

“Look, there,” she says, pointing somewhere above them. “That’s Orion. We came back by the left of that star.”

“Did we?” Coulson asks, interested.

Daisy laughs.

“I have no idea,” she confesses. “I was just trying to be like - in the movies, when the guy impresses the girl with his knowledge of astronomy.”

“Why would you want to impress me?”

“Forget it,” Daisy says, flinching with pain and embarrassment, her body poised to get up and off the hood.

Coulson stops her, wrapping his fingers around the crook of her elbow. She draws back, rolling on her elbow, until the angle is right and he kisses her. She slides her tongue inside his mouth, her fingers grabbing the front of his shirt. She likes that night in that planet, like she wants to stay here forever.

When they finally pull apart - it takes a while - they smile at each other, almost laugh, amazed at their own bravery. Coulson touches his nose to her cheek, brushing his lips along hers again.

“Daisy… Only nerds would be impressed by astronomy knowledge,” he whispers.

Daisy cups his chin in her hand. “That’s why I tried it with you.”

The glow of the stars above dances in the corner of her eyes a moment, before she closes them again and her mouth swallows Coulson’s soft laughter.


End file.
